The Great War (World War I 1914-1918) has been in the public consciousness for many years in the shadows of the heavily traumatized World War II (1939-1945).

And yet it was the first of the world’s conflicts that determined the geopolitical shape of today’s world, and until the outbreak of World War II was the most important of the conflicts in the history of mankind’s most recent era, and is called the Great War, in various languages. The countries that started it did not survive, and as a result, new countries, new problems and the seeds of future regional conflicts and the next world war emerged. Aviation, “the era of wings and the rulers of the skies,” played a prominent role in both world conflicts, especially in the first, when the war of movement and the rigidity from the earth rose to the air. In the twentieth century, by constant evolution, the airplane, most commonly called an aircraft, was transformed from a “shapeless box” into an excellent tool, obedient to man and giving him indispensable service in all spheres of life. Until 17 December 1903, ie at the time of the first flight of brothers Orville and Wilbur Wrights’ aircraft named “Flyer I” at Kitty Hawk in the United States of America, the airspace - “third dimension” - was “captured” only by the aeronauts.8 They gave rise to aviation, or the air forces. As defined at the beginning of the 20th century:

Aviation uses devices heavier than the air; Balloon units use lighter than air devices: free and captive balloons, airships and one heavier than the air device – a kite.However, before the shots in Bosnian Sarajevo which gave rise to the Great War had been fired10, planes as the “fifth arm” were used during two conflicts in the world: Italian-Turkish war 1911-1912 (Libyan war) for Tripolitania (Arabian Tarabulus), Cyrenaica (Arabian Barka) and Fezzan (Arabian Fazzān) in North Africa and the First Balkan War 1912-1913 in Europe, and before them, after the kites “flew to war” was the aerostat - balloons. On 4 June 1783, a canvas and paper balloon filled with heated air constructed by brothers Joseph Michael and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier with a diameter of 11.7 m and volume of 900 m3 was the first ever to perform a flight lasting about 10 minutes. “Gazeta Warszawska” in the issue of September 8, 1783, reported: We have a fresh invention that the local authority has judged to be decent to publicly report to prevent vain fears that would make the new thing among the commoners. Counting the difference in gravity between the air called “burning” and the air of our atmosphere, it was discovered that the great sphere of light material filled with “burning” air should itself rise to heaven and rising higher and higher, until both of these airs will not be in the same weight but it cannot be, unless at great altitude. The first experience was made in Languedoc in the district of Vivarais in Annonay by the inventors Messrs Motgolfier themselves. A canvas and paper sphere of 150 feet in circumference and filled up with this “burning” air, raised itself to a considerable altitude that could not be measured.